Perhaps the developer should be praised for their willingness to do something new and break out of the box marked 'McMansion'. There's no reason why living in a pseudo-industrial estate is any different from living in a fantasy development like Seaside, with its picket fences and strict residential codes. It's all very well for commentators to tut over the irony (the piece concludes that 'as commercial builders embrace a loft aesthetic, the fact that lofts were a way of reviving disused urban neighborhoods falls by the wayside'), but the truth is that this Colorado suburb isn't alone.

In Minnesota, the Sunset Ridge Senior Homes, designed by the firm Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle (who aren't, by any stretch of the imagination, bad architects), fulfils a similar role - transplanting spaces and styles once only experienced through a layer of urban grit into wipe clean suburbs. The vogue for 'loft-style' developments (and other hybrids, like the 'loft house') doesn't seem to have peaked in the UK, nor has the hackneyed desire for 'space and light'. As a result, one expects this kind of development will surface, in some form or another, over here soon. But, as with so many things in life, the emphasis is on cloaking the everyday in something else, adding more and more layers of meaning and complexity.